Why the 19th of January is the beginning of 2015 for this particular writer.

I know it isn't January the First today - let me look, ah yes, it's the 19th, well that'll do.  It feels like the beginning of the new year so give me some slack here, OK. It's 2015 which, for me, is worth celebrating mainly because it's not 2014. If I'm to remain optimistic about 2015, I've decided it should begin today rather than on the more mathematically correct date.

On New Year's Eve 2014, I was perfectly prepared to celebrate until a fever over-took me and sent me to bed shivering, my teeth chattering, in a relapse from an unpleasant condition that had begun in November and that has only really left me, I hope, in the last couple of days. I don't see why we can't invent our own diaries, calendars and schedules and, even if I can't persuade you all to see today as the beginning of the new year, then I intend to go ahead anyway.

It's not just a health thing. Last Monday I finished and sent off to Ward Wood Publishing, the fifth draft of my second novel, Still Notes, Still Frames, which will be published later this year. I'm sure there will be more tweaks and adjustments but it is, in reality, finished until the ever vigilant Adele Ward of Ward Wood comes up with her usual insightful comments. As far as my brain is concerned though, the bulk of the work is done and it can relax into other duties like mostly concentrating on my new novel that is now a quarter through its first draft. Thinking two novels at the same time has been a hazardous occupation so my brain and I are celebrating 2015 in the spirit of ring out the old and ring in the new.

Feeling less cluttered mentally, and much better physically,  has encouraged me to establish new working practices and a new rhythm to my daily life here in Lewes, UK.  I know you've all done your New Year stuff - made and already broken your resolutions, got over your hangovers, decided to give up that diet or that frail attempt at spending January on the wagon but, yes, give me some slack here everyone.

My resolutions centre around finding more space in my life, seeing a bit more blue sky, settling into a fitness regime that suits my schedule, getting this daily blog back up and running now that it is entering its 7th year and, a difficult one this, staying healthy.

Wish me luck because I'll need it. It might be registering very cold here today on the poncey South-East England thermometer but the sun is shining and I can't detect any physical ailment so far this morning, so optimism reigns, Happy New 2015.

My Haiku poem becomes a film - a little one - and I'm delighted.

I was very happy to see a fine new animated film, Haiku, by my friend, the talented American composer and film-maker, Tim Risher (aka Joseph Nussbaum).  It was exciting that it was based on one of my poems, Haiku. It's terrific when poetry, music and film come together like this. This is the second of my poems to be made into a film but, in the nature of Haiku, this one's only short so give me a moment of your time and take a look - it's wonderful:




See the other poem film, Sortie, also with music by Tim Risher, directed by Boris Twist - there's a link in the left column on this page.

The Beatle, the Cardinal, the Poet and the Prime Minister - my meetings with famous people memorialised in my newly published Fibonacci poems.

A page from the latest issue of The Fib Review

This isn't the first time that I've written about my Fibonacci poetry on these pages but today, I'm particularly thrilled that I have ten new poems published in The Fib Review #19 which came out over the weekend. These poems, written to a syllable count taking self-imposed rules from the medieval Italian arithmetician, Leonardo Fibonacci, the so-called Fibonacci Sequence when a pattern is seen in the relationship between  numbers written to the pattern 1: 1 : 2 : 3 : 5 : 8 :13 : 21 : 34  etc. etc.  At it's simplest the pattern means that each number is the sum of the previous two but you can, of course, reverse the order and do a whole number of variations. I've loved imposing this discipline on my poetry and now, thanks to the continuing support of The Fib Review's editor Mary-Jane Grandinetti, I have been writing 'Fibs' for over five years, forty-five of them published in fifteen consecutive issues of The Fib Review, the World's leading Fibonacci publisher. Heres' the link where you will find my ten poems plus a whole lot more.  http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

Leonardo Fibonacci (1170 - 1240)

This summer I've been sorting all my Fibonacci poetry into some kind of order, there are now 62 of them, and found that they sat together happily enough and, without being a literal narrative, they tell the story of my many brief encounters with people in my personal life but also in the years when I worked in television. Sorting them out and writing some to fill the gaps, it was a bit like putting together a photograph album so, it was not much of a struggle to call the collection, Brief Encounters. Some of the latest poems have been about meetings with famous people, some admired, some feared and some disliked. It's possibly a form of poetic name-dropping but I hope it adds up to more than that. Not all the encounters were with the famous - some are friends, some strangers and, a few, are imaginary encounters with some of my fears and obsessions.

In Issue 19 of The Fib Review,  four of the ten poems deal with my meetings with the famous - vivid memories all. As all four are now deceased, it seemed like a good idea to memorialise those brief encounters among my latest Fibonacci experiments with minimalism. I hope you'll enjoy them.

Beatle George Harrison (1943 - 2001)

Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997)

Cardinal Basil Hume  (1923 - 1999)

 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925 - 2013)